TRANSPORTATION & COMMUNITIES Survey Results

In April and May 2015, 52,845 Utahns shared their voice through the Your Utah, Your Future survey. Participants chose their favorite scenarios for transportation and communities and other topics. After choosing scenarios, survey participants had the option to answer a series of questions to prioritize transportation and communities among other issues, determine the most important outcomes related to transportation and communities, and identify how willing they would be to take specific actions that would ensure those outcomes. The survey results were cross-checked against a random-sample survey to ensure they represented the desires and opinions of Utahns.

What Utahns Want

More than 82% of Utahns chose the Quaking Aspen and Sego Lily scenario, in which people live close to mixed-use centers that contain jobs, shopping, recreation, and a variety of housing. The centers are designed both to make walking, biking, and taking public transportation convenient, as well as to allow people to drive shorter distances to reach most their destinations.

Why They Want It

Utahns want to conveniently get around their communities without a car, to reduce traffic congestion, to live close to destinations, and to reduce the amount of farmland lost to development. Utahns do not place much importance on ensuring there are plentiful neighborhoods that are mostly just single-family homes on large lots.

What They Are Willing To Do

To achieve these goals, Utahns are willing to design communities to be more convenient for pedestrians and cyclists, even if driving becomes slightly less convenient. They are willing to build mixed-use centers with apartments and multistory buildings distributed throughout urban areas, and they are even willing to have more local traffic congestion if destinations are closer together and overall drive times decrease. They are not willing to make any of the tradeoffs required to develop primarily large-lot homes.